Similarities and differences in self-disclosure and friendship development between fact-to-face communication and Facebook

This research identified the patterns of self-disclosure between face-to-face and Facebook friends’ interactions. A survey of 317 participants was conducted to compare the hypothesized relationships among social attraction, self-disclosure, predictability and trust in three types of relationships: recently added Facebook friend, exclusive Facebook friend, and an exclusive face-to-face friend. Data was analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM), multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), t-tests and correlations. Results indicated that individuals reporting high levels of social attraction also reported having greater self-disclosure with their latest added Facebook friend, exclusive Facebook friend and an exclusive face-to-face friend. This supports a theorem of Uncertainty Reduction Theory that states that persons disclose intimate information to individuals they like and withhold intimate information from persons whom they do not like. These individuals also reported greater predictability of their Facebook and face-to-face friends’ behavior, which supports axiom of Uncertainty Reduction Theory that as the amount of verbal communication between strangers increases, the level of uncertainty for each interactant in the relationship will decrease. The more friends talked to each other, the less uncertainty they experienced. Additional evidence that the relationship development across different friendship types (latest added Facebook friend, exclusive Facebook friend and exclusive face-to-face friend) is similar was the statistically significant relationship between the variables of self-disclosure and trust. This supports the tenets of Social Penetration Theory and previous studies that found self-disclosure to be important for the facilitation of developing mutual trust. The results of this study showed that the process of relationship development, in terms of the relationship between social attraction, self-disclosure, predictability and trust, were similar in both Facebook and face-to-face relationships. However, significant differences existed in the amount of self-disclosure and trust between Facebook friends and face-to-face friends. Although the average duration of both exclusive face-to-face friendships and exclusive Facebook friendships was six years, participants reported more self-disclosure, more predictability and trust in their face-to-face friends than with their Facebook friends. The findings about offline friendships involving more breadth and depth than online friendships seem to support “cues-filtered-out” approach

Adolescents' privacy on social network sites: an investigation of predictors of privacy protection behavior

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The digital glass house - Social networking and privacy

Since the explosion of the Internet age, nearly 2 billion people are connected to the World Wide Web, creating seemingly limitless opportunities for communication and collaboration including social networking. Communication is virtually instantaneous and vast amounts of information are available at the touch of a key.In such an open digital environment, we take it for granted that almost any information can be sourced online by anyone with Internet access.The rapid growth of the social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook, which reaches 500 million users recently, has coincided with an increasing concern over personal privacy.This study examines how Facebook users' perceptions of privacy, frequency of use, and the disclosure of their personal information with other users. This study was guided by two research questions: What are the Facebook users' perceptions of privacy and what is the personal information they disclose to other users? Does the Facebook users' frequency of use affect their disclosure of personal information? 149 respondents from the researcher's own Facebook profile filled up a Web-based questionnaire in August 2010. The data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics.The research hypothesized that higher levels of privacy perception will result in less disclosure of personal information and the more active a user is on Facebook, the greater will be the user's likelihood of maintaining a private profile. The results of chi-square tests and correlation analysis found significant positive relationships between privacy perception and the disclosure of personal information, and no significant relationships between frequency of use and disclosure of personal information. Recommendations for future researchers were also included

Development and Maintenance of Self-Disclosure on Facebook: The Role of Personality Traits

This study explored the relationships between Facebook self-disclosure and personality traits in a sample of Italian users. The aim was to analyze the predictive role of Big Five personality traits on different parameters of breadth and depth of selfdisclosed behaviors online. Facebook users, aged between 18 and 64 years of age (Mage = 25.3 years, SD = 6.8; N = 958), of which 51% were female, voluntarily completed an online survey assessing personality traits and Facebook self-disclosure. Results at a series of hierarchical regression analyses significantly corroborated the hypotheses that high extroverted and openness people tend to disclose on Facebook a significant amount of personal information, whereas high consciousness and agreeableness users are less inclined to do it. Furthermore, more extroverts and agreeableness people develop less intimacy on Facebook, differently from those with high levels of openness. Results also corroborated the hypothesis of a full mediation of time usage in the relationship between personality factors such as extroversion and conscientiousness with breadth of Facebook self-disclosure. Overall, according to the findings of the current study, personality traits and Facebook self-disclosure become central both as predictive variables for depicting the different profiles of potential addicted and as variables to help educators, teachers, and clinicians to develop training or therapeutic programs aimed at preventing the risk of Internet addiction. Limitations of the study are discussed, and directions for future research are suggested

Gay men’s experiences coming out online : a qualitative study

The current study employed qualitative methodology to investigate the experiences of 12 men who came out online, using Facebook. Analysis of coding data yielded several key themes. First, gay men discussed a range of experiences that influenced their online disclosure including homophobia, internalized homophobia, and previous salient sexual identity disclosures. Participants also commonly expressed a variety of goals and concerns about coming out online, including improving relationships and loss of friends. Finally, gay men identified several benefits to coming out on Facebook, including increased efficiency in coming out as compared to face-to-face disclosures, increased authenticity, and decreased ambiguity about their sexuality. Results are discussed within the context of literature on men’s coming-out experiences, men and masculinity and online identity management.Educational Psycholog

The impact of Facebook use on micro-level social capital: a synthesis

The relationship between Facebook use and micro-level social capital has received substantial scholarly attention over the past decade. This attention has resulted in a large body of empirical work that gives insight into the nature of Facebook as a social networking site and how it influences the social benefits that people gather from having social relationships. Although the extant research provides a solid basis for future research into this area, a number of issues remain underexplored. The aim of the current article is twofold. First, it seeks to synthesize what is already known about the relationship between Facebook use and micro-level social capital. Second, it seeks to advance future research by identifying and analyzing relevant theoretical, analytical and methodological issues. To address the first research aim, we first present an overview and analysis of current research findings on Facebook use and social capital, in which we focus on what we know about (1) the relationship between Facebook use in general and the different subtypes of social capital; (2) the relationships between different types of Facebook interactions and social capital; and (3) the impact of self-esteem on the relationship between Facebook use and social capital. Based on this analysis, we subsequently identify three theoretical issues, two analytical issues and four methodological issues in the extant body of research, and discuss the implications of these issues for Facebook and social capital researchers

Social network profiles as information sources for adolescents' offline relations

This paper presents the results of a study concerning the use of online profile pages by adolescents to know more about “offline” friends and acquaintances. Previous research has indicated that social networking sites (SNSs) are used to gather information on new online contacts. However, several studies have demonstrated a substantial overlap between offline and online social networks. Hence, we question whether online connections are meaningful in gathering information on offline friends and acquaintances. First, the results indicate that a combination of passive uncertainty reduction (monitoring a target’s profile) and interactive uncertainty reduction (communication through the target’s profile) explains a considerable amount of variance in the level of uncertainty about both friends and acquaintances. More specifically, adolescents generally get to know much more about their acquaintances. Second, the results of online uncertainty reduction positively affect the degree of self-disclosure, which is imperative in building a solid friend relation. Furthermore, we find that uncertainty reduction strategies positively mediate the effect of social anxiety on the level of certainty about friends. This implies that socially anxious teenagers benefit from SNSs by getting the conditions right to build a more solid relation with their friends. Hence, we conclude that SNSs play a substantial role in today’s adolescents’ everyday interpersonal communication

Online Privacy as a Collective Phenomenon

The problem of online privacy is often reduced to individual decisions to hide or reveal personal information in online social networks (OSNs). However, with the increasing use of OSNs, it becomes more important to understand the role of the social network in disclosing personal information that a user has not revealed voluntarily: How much of our private information do our friends disclose about us, and how much of our privacy is lost simply because of online social interaction? Without strong technical effort, an OSN may be able to exploit the assortativity of human private features, this way constructing shadow profiles with information that users chose not to share. Furthermore, because many users share their phone and email contact lists, this allows an OSN to create full shadow profiles for people who do not even have an account for this OSN. We empirically test the feasibility of constructing shadow profiles of sexual orientation for users and non-users, using data from more than 3 Million accounts of a single OSN. We quantify a lower bound for the predictive power derived from the social network of a user, to demonstrate how the predictability of sexual orientation increases with the size of this network and the tendency to share personal information. This allows us to define a privacy leak factor that links individual privacy loss with the decision of other individuals to disclose information. Our statistical analysis reveals that some individuals are at a higher risk of privacy loss, as prediction accuracy increases for users with a larger and more homogeneous first- and second-order neighborhood of their social network. While we do not provide evidence that shadow profiles exist at all, our results show that disclosing of private information is not restricted to an individual choice, but becomes a collective decision that has implications for policy and privacy regulation